Dear colleagues,
For the measurement of interdisciplinarity, one can use, for example,
Rao-Stirling diversity which is defined as follows (Rao, 1982; Stirling,
2007):
Δ = Σij pi pj dij (1)
where dij is a disparity measure between two classes

Dear FISers,
I have no difficulty in understanding Loet's approach as measuring one form of
interdisciplinarity. However, it requires well-defined quantitative entities -
classes, categories and journal articles to which they apply. I thus do not
think that it exhausts the possibilities of the

Rafael, Joseph, list members,
That is an interesting way of putting it, but I think the answer is yes. C.S.
Peirce's pragmatacism is aimed at doing exactly that. Mathematical structures
and other structural models have no implication of reality in the sense that
reality is contingent, so we